Joe Alwyn's songwriter pseudonym on his tracks with Taylor Swift is a tribute to great-grandfather.
Joe Alwyn didn't use his real name on the songwriting credits for his collaborations with girlfriend Taylor Swift
The actor collaborated with his pop star girlfriend on a number of songs but decided to credit himself as William Bowery instead of using his real name and he's now revealed there is a sweet reason behind the choice.
Speaking on 'The Kelly Clarkson Show', Joe explained: "It was a combination of William, my great-grandfather - who I actually never met - (who])was a composer. He wrote a lot of classical music and he wrote a lot of film scores.
"And then Bowery is the area in New York that I spent a lot of time in when I first went over there. So, stick 'em together."
Joe co-wrote two songs on Taylor's 2020 album 'Folklore' and three more on 'Evermore', which was released later that same year.
Speaking to host Kelly, Joe revealed he chose to use a pseudonym because he didn't want fans to be distracted by the fact that the couple had collaborated on the songs.
He added: "We chose to do it so the people, first and foremost, would listen to the music first before dissecting the fact that we did it together.
"We did it under the name William Bowery, very fancy. It sounds like a kind of Agatha Christie character that should be wearing a monocle with a big moustache."
It comes after Joe previously explained the collaboration between the pair was not planned, but it just happened by chance when they were holed up together during lockdown.
He told GQ Hype magazine: "It was really the most accidental thing to happen in lockdown. It wasn't like, 'It's three o'clock, it's time to write a song!'
"It was just messing around on a piano and singing badly and being overheard and then thinking, you know, 'what if we tried to get to the end of it together?'."
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